The Cloisters opened with the help of funds from Rockefeller and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Parts of medieval cloisters and the collection of the artist George Grey Barnard formed the original collection. The Barnard collection had been in its own building on Fort Washington Avenue and 190th Street from 1914 to 1937.
George Grey Barnard
(b. 1863 Bellefonte, PA d. NY 1938)
was an American sculptor and an important art collector. He lived in Kankakee, Ill. from age 5 through 13. Late in his life, he donated 100 of his studio plaster statues and studies for display in the Kankakee's old Central School. At age 19, he began his studies at the Art Institute of Chicago School. In 1883, he went to Paris to continue his studies under Pierre-Jules Cavelier (1814-94) at the Ιcole des Beaux-Arts. There he met Alfred Clark, a wealthy American collector, who became an important patron. French critics compared his work to that of Michelangelo. Rodin was an influence on his early work.Back in New York, he taught at the Art Student's League for three years, but returned to Paris in 1904 to complete two marble allegorical groups, the 'Broken Law' and the 'Unbroken Law', for the Pennsylvania State Capitol at Harrisburg. In 1911, he worked on his unidealized bronze statue of Abraham Lincoln for Lytle Park in Cincinnati, OH. This would become a controversial sculpture because Robert Todd Lincoln the President's son objected to it. His last and most monumental project, known as the Rainbow Arch, consisted of over 50 heroic figures, each approximately 2.7 m high, was never finished beyond a full-scale plaster model (later destroyed). In 1925, his collection of Gothic art was purchased by John D. Rockefeller Jr. and given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, where it formed the basis of the Cloisters Museum, erected in 1938 on the sculptor's former property. Barnard made 'The God Pan' (Columbia University) and 'The Hewer' (Cairo, Ill.). Three of his statues 'Hewer,' 'Rising Woman' and 'Adam and Eve' were on the Pontico Hills estate of John D. Rockefeller Jr. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In his career he received a gold medal fom the Paris Exposition of 1900, the Buffalo Exposition of 1901, and a special gold medal from the National Association of Sculptors, Painters and Artists of France.
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1) Uptown Manhattan Map [26]
